Abstract: An elevator includes a microprocessor-based cab controller mounted on the elevator car to monitor calls for service by passengers in the car, controls the opening and closing of the door, monitors the position of the car relative to an adjacent landing and communicates with a microprocessor-based car controller, disposed at the top of the shaftway, which controls the motion of the car in the shaftway and provides commands to the cab controller, such as door opening and closing demands relating to calls at the landings, and the like. The cab controller monitors the viability of communications which it receives from the car controller, monitors the position of the door relative to the position of the car with respect to floor landings and provides a signal to enable applying power to the sheave-driving motor and the brake pick-up coils in the machine room only in the event that such monitoring indicates no safety problems.

Abstract: A microprocessor cab controller for an elevator car processes signals to control car calls by means of routines which prevent car calls from being registered behind the advancing direction of the car unless the car is headed for the lobby without further demand or the car has no advance direction. Also disclosed are routines which respond to directives from a car controller mounted in the building to reset all car calls, reset selected car calls, reset the car call at a floor landing where the car is stopping, or force selected car calls; to inhibit car calls in a selected one of two zones of continuous floors for implementing dual up peak operation, and for selectively inhibiting registration of car calls at floors which are designated as cut off from service by the car.

Abstract: An elevator control system employes microprocessor-based group controller which communicates with the cars of the elevator system to determine conditions of the cars and responds to hall calls registered at a plurality of landings in the building serviced by the cars under control of the group controller, to provide assignments of calls to cars based on the summation for each car, with respect to each call, a weighted summation of a plurality of system response factors indicative of conditions of the car irrespective of the call to be assigned, and indicative of conditions of the car relative to the call to be assigned, including factors relating to preferring cars which are running, which require motion to provide service already assigned to the car, which do not have lobby calls, which are not positioned at the lobby, which are not full, even though the car may have a car call at the floor of the hall call under consideration, which do not have excessive car calls in them, and so forth.

Abstract: A discrete position encoder includes a plurality of detectors, arranged along a direction of motion or relative position between two objects, which are rendered responsive in either of two states by another member which is relatively movable with respect thereto, such as light beams established by light sources and optical detectors being interruptible by a vane. The vane is adjusted so that when the two objects are centrally aligned with each other, the two outermost detectors have a state opposite to other detectors. Two rows of detectors are provided to permit flexibility in designing the positional extent of detectable discrete positions. Exemplary decoding includes the decoding of as many fault states as acceptable decodable discrete position states. Embodiments with opposite detector states (ON/OFF vs OFF/ON) are disclosed.

Abstract: The operation of an actuator (16) is monitored by comparing its position (21) with the position (31, 136) indicated by a model which integrates (45, 135) a limited amount of the difference between the position command (24) applied to the actuator and the achieved model position (31, 136), the limited amount being variable (63, 67, 124) from a nominal limit (61, 65, 124) in dependence upon limited functions (74, 90, 114, 116) of the difference (33, 109) between the actuator position and the model position, and additionally reduced (80, 94, 122) when pilot input overrides (50, 108) the position of the actuator.

Abstract: A surface acoustic wave resonator formed on a semiconductive piezoelectric substrate (9) has arrays (10, 11) of reflector elements forming rectifying junctions with the substrate, a voltage is impressed between the arrays and related ohmic ground contacts (12, 13) for controlling the carrier concentration beneath the arrays so as to vary the acoustic velocity therebeneath, thereby to tune the resonator. The resonator may include two acoustoelectric transducers (16, 17) for connection with an amplifier in an oscillator loop, or may have but a single acoustoelectric transducer (20) for interconnection between the elements of an oscillator circuit (21).

Abstract: For each of two computer systems, logic flowcharts describe background program in which highly detailed memory checksum tests of fixed memory and complementary tests of variable memory are performed, the background program being interrupted for utility programs which are for the most part responsive to transducer or other sensor and discrete inputs to calculate control values for operation of control actuators or other responsive devices. The utility programs include specific self test routines. A direct memory access unit is included in each computer for moving data between inputs of either computer and memories of both, and between the memories of both computers. Periodic testing of fault codes registering the health of each computer is done during utility program routines, any variation from normal causing further health-analysis routines to be performed until dispositive action-causing conditions are determined.

Abstract: The foldable rotor blades (12) of a helicopter are automatically adjusted to pitch angles where they can be locked as a prerequisite to folding by commands generated (98, 112) to cause trim actuators (39-41) to drive swash plate servos (17-19) to the correct positions, initially (98) in response to stored trim references (120) and eventually (112) in response to the difference (109) between stored swash plate servo positions (120) and current servo positions (20-22).

Abstract: Requests for elevator express priority service are assigned to a car committable to the floor of the request if possible, or otherwise to a car which can reach the floor of the request sooner than other available cars. Whenever there are requests for express priority service and no cars available to respond thereto, polling of floor landings in subsequent cycles to determine if there are requests which can be assigned is commenced at a floor landing next in sequence to the one for which an outstanding request was unassignable for lack of available cars, and the unassignable request is reset so as to provide an indication thereof to the requestor. Express priority service requests are reassigned whenever the assignment is outstanding for an impermissible time.

Abstract: A microprocessor cab controller for an elevator car processes signals to control car calls by means of routines which prevent car calls from being registered behind the advancing direction of the car unless the car is headed for the lobby without further demand or the car has no advance direction, which respond to directives from a car controller mounted in the building to reset all car calls, reset selected car calls, reset the car call at a floor landing where the car is stopping, or force selected car calls; to inhibit car calls in a selected one of two zones of continuous floors for implementing dual up peak operation, and for selectively inhibiting registration of car calls at floors which are designated as cut off from service by the car. The invention allows the group controller to block or restore response of selected elevators to car calls for specific floors or to restore response of selected elevators to car calls for all floors.

Abstract: A microprocessor cab controller for an elevator car processes signals to control car calls by means of routines which prevent car calls from being registered behind the advancing direction of the car unless the car is headed for the lobby without further demand or the car has no advance direction, which responds to directives from a car controller mounted in the building to reset all car calls, reset selected car calls, reset the car call at a floor landing where the car is stopping, or force selected car calls; to inhibit car calls in a selected one of two zones of continuous floors for implementing dual up peak operation, and for selectively inhibiting registration of car calls at floors which are designated as cut off from service by the car. The invention allows use of the car call function for commanding special service and for inhibiting calls inconsistent therewith.

Abstract: A group controller (17, FIG. 1) for an elevator system servicing a plurality of cars (3, 4) provides next higher demand signals (21, 23, FIG. 4) in addition to higher and lower demand signals (13, 18, FIG. 4), and provides next hall stop commands (8, 11, FIG. 3) in addition to down hall stop and up hall stop commands (11, 17, FIG. 2). The car controller (15, 16, FIG. 1) of each car will determine when its actual committable floor is equal to a floor ahead of the last committable floor it communicated to the group controller (2, FIG. 5) so as to utilize the next demand and next hall stop commands (3-6, FIG. 5) when it actually has advanced beyond the last committable floor for which the group controller has processed command signals for the car, whereby delays in communicating and processing signals between car controllers and a related group controller cannot result in loss of proper group demand and stop commands to the car controller.

Abstract: A plurality of elevators operating under the control of a group controller may provide a start request to the group controller in response to service demand when their MG sets have not been commanded to run, and in the absence of a responsive MG start command from the group controller, can start their own MG sets if there has been a communication failure with the group, instantaneously if commanded to start on emergency power or after a time interval if not commanded to start on emergency power, the time interval for each elevator differing from that of the other elevators so as to avoid simultaneous start-up. The group controller can shut off all MG sets when there has been no service demand in any of the elevators for some period of time, but each elevator can also shut off its own MG set when it has had no service demand for a period of time which is longer than the period of time for which the group shutdown must wait.

Abstract: The onset of electric discharge instability in rare-gas monofluoride lasers pumped by electron beam sustained electric discharges (e.g., KrF*) is delayed by employing a laser gas mixture (such as 0.95 Ar, 0.05 Kr, and 0.005 F.sub.2) which includes a small amount of a halogen compound (NF.sub.3) having a rate coefficient for electron dissociative attachment which is much larger than that for fluorine (such as 0.0005 NF.sub.3). The addition of nitrogen trifluoride to the gas mixture modifies the halogen kinetics in a manner to reduce the effect that consumption of the fluorine fuel has on the growth of secondary electrons, and therefore the occurrence of instability in the discharge. The rare-gas metastable quenching coefficient for the nitrogen trifluoride is sufficiently small (on the order of six times smaller than that of the fluorine) so that the small amount of nitrogen trifluoride utilized to stabilize the discharge exerts little or no influence on the other laser processes.

Abstract: A dual range accelerometer includes a mass 10 supported on a cantilevered beam 12, there being stops 70, 71 such that for low accelerations the beam acts as a cantilever and for high accelerations, one of the stops causes the beam to flex as a beam supported at both ends. Surface acoustic wave devices 17, 46 provide a signal having a frequency which is a function of strain in the beam 12, thereby to detect accelerations in two different ranges.

Abstract: A discrete position encoder having a plurality of spaced apart pairs of optical sources and detectors, thereby providing a plurality of interruptible light beams, mounted on one member, cooperating with a light-occluding vane which is mounted on another member movable relative to the first member, there being at least two of the detectors which are not occluded while at least two other detectors are occluded when the two members are relatively centrally aligned with each other, the vane having a notch therein centrally disposed along the vane in the direction of relative motion, the notch being relatively adjustable in size by means of adding additional membranes, such as self-sticking plastic sheet or the like, to the vane to alter the light-occluding capacity of the notch, thereby to tailor the response of the detectors to the effective notch caused by the altering.

Abstract: Temperature compensation is provided to a surface acoustic wave device including acoustoelectric transducers (12, 14) formed on a surface of a gallium arsenide substrate (10), by a composite layer including silicon dioxide (18, 26) and a mass loading metal (20, 24), which may be gold, titanium and gold, or other metals having Rayleigh wave velocities lower than that of gallium arsenide, such as silver and platinum.

Abstract: An elevator system includes a microprocessor-based cab controller mounted directly on an elevator car, which controls the operation of the elevator door. Elevator door motion is commanded in response to the difference in actual door velocity from a desired, dictated door velocity in accordance with desired rates of acceleration and deceleration, and desired maximum velocity, acceleration and deceleration, the point at which deceleration is to begin, and a velocity at which decleration is to decrease. The disclosed invention provides a bench velocity, a final, slow velocity, by controlling the velocity at which deceleration is to decrease, so that the acceleration vs time of the profile exceeds the deceleration vs time of the profile by an amount resulting in the desired, final bench velocity.

Abstract: An elevator system has a microprocessor-based cab controller mounted directly on the elevator car, the elevator door mechanism is connected to a transducer which provides signals as a function of the position of the door mechanism, and the cab controller controls the door motion in a closed loop manner by providing door command signals to the elevator door mechanism in dependence upon the deviation of the present door velocity from a current value of a dictated velocity in accordance with a desired door traverse velocity profile which includes desired increasing and decreasing rates of acceleration and deceleration, and desired maximum velocity, acceleration and deceleration. The disclosure includes a typical elevator system, an exemplary cab controller, and an exemplary door control program flowchart as an environment for the present invention, in addition to details concerning the invention.

Abstract: Faults in a sensor (10) are detected by excess rate fault determination by taking the differentiated (58, 107), rate limited (60, 100, 111) integral (64, 112) from the raw sensor output (72, 113) and indicating a fault (15, 117) in the event that the difference exceeds a predetermined magnitude (76, 114). A null fault (22, 91) is provided in the event that the sensor output does not show a significant change (52, 88) within a given time interval (20, 80) whenever a related sensor (31) indicates (29, 84) that the first sensor (10) should have measurable activity. Both analog (FIG. 1) and digital (FIG. 2, FIG. 3) embodiments are disclosed.